First
up and only support tonight are Delain, a 5 piece
symphonic Dutch metal band, formed by a former
member of Within Temptation, and also a perfect
compliment to tonight's headliner.
They certainly have been influenced by bands of
the same genre that have been highly successful
like Nightwish and Within Temptation, the songs
are pretty good but they lack the killer catchiness
that the fore mentioned seem to have found these
past few years. They have
some really good guitar riffs and the drumming
is, while not overly technical has the beats that
you can tap your finger or thumb to or maybe even
the occasional bit of air drumming, this band
is certainly on the right track and on the up
and up and if they keep evolving and polishing
their sound they can carve out a nice piece of
the market in this country for themselves and
I'm sure they have won a load of fans tonight
amongst the ones already in attendance.
Within
Temptation are always a band I look forward to
seeing live, they always put on a really decent
show and tonight is no different although as I
hear it, it isn't the full stage show due to space
restrictions.
I thought the opening song wasn't the best choice,
'Let Us Burn' , it feels a bit weak but the following
few songs really kick the show into life with
Sharon coming down the steps on which she stayed
for the opening song, 'Paradise', 'Faster' and
'Iron' really get the set exiting for me, but
the crowd are already well into it, 'Faster' doesn't
seem as punchy for me.
Things
are taken down a notch with 'Edge of the World',
it's mellow and tinged with sadness, but a really,
really good song. The middle of the night takes
the pace right back up, and more in line with
it's studio counterpart, fast and catchy as hell
but the guitar tone has a bit of menace about
it which is pretty cool.
While Sharon is undoubtedly a star I feel a bit
too much focus is on her and less so on the rest
of the band, the light literally and figuratively,
seems to be on her 95% of the time, the band just
seems to lurk about in the dark.
We
are now well into the set with the likes of the
heavy anthemic 'Jillian', Sharon get's very operatic
and the band get heavy which is good on the ears,
to which the crowd show their appreciation with
a round of applause when the song finishes, this
is followed by 'Angels', 'Dangerous' and 'And
we Run', which is then followed by another movie
snippet on the big screen behind the band as they
take a quick breather.
After the short breather they enter the tail end
of their superb show with the likes of 'See Who
I Am, 'The Cross' and main set closer 'Mother
Earth'. One thing I did notice is they do seem
to have a backing vocal track on some of their
songs, and to fill in parts where they have had
a guest vocalist, it's good that they haven't
dismissed these parts.
After a short break they come back on and open
the encore with 'What Have You Done', whilst wildly
popular with the crowd and fans in general it's
not one of my favourites, but that don't matter
much, they perform an acoustic version of 'Whole
World is Watching' and a Lana del Rey cover 'Summertime
Sadness' which happens to be my favourite LDR
track and they do a really good cover of it. Closing
out the night is 'Ice Queen', a really solid track
to finish the night and send the crowd out on
their hopefully merry way and they have certainly
got their monies worth with a superb show tonight.
Delian 3.5/5
Within Temptation 5/5
Review And Photos By Robert Lawrence
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